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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29896038">How He Showed He Cared</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/kindoff/pseuds/kindoff'>kindoff</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Away Mission Gone Awry (kinda), Established Relationship, Hurt Spock (Star Trek), M/M, Sickfic, Spock in Sickbay</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 18:00:22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,577</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29896038</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/kindoff/pseuds/kindoff</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim liked to kiss Spock's temple. It was most curious, to say the least. Not that Spock was complaining.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>James T. Kirk/Spock</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>126</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>How He Showed He Cared</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Jim liked to kiss Spock's temple.</p><p>He did it anywhere and anytime: upon waking up, on the way to the bridge, when he dropped by the lab ("I doubt the validity of 'dropping by' if the task is accomplished by making a detour around the ship, Captain." "Semantics, Spock."), when either of them wound up in sickbay, in a haste before an away mission, before and after receiving a transmission from Starfleet, and a bunch of others that didn’t make it into the record.</p><p>It seemed that any occasion warranted a kiss. Most of them were quick and passing, but some were more affectionate and tender than the rest. When Spock was incapacitated and lost the argument with McCoy, he deliberately made himself look put out and vengeful towards the ultimatum to stay on the biobed overnight and take light duty for the next two days. Jim took him into his arms and nuzzled the side of his head.</p><p>"Oh, Spock," he murmured, pressing a kiss on Spock's temple. He didn't draw back immediately, instead lingering as if understood Spock’s need for comfort. Spock curled his fist around the hem of Jim's command gold. "I hate Bones's needling, but this once, I agree to keep you off duty for a while."</p><p>Somewhat betrayed, Spock projected as much affront as he could muster. Wasn’t Jim the one opposed to any medical treatment himself? "Doctor McCoy has verbally expressed my taking light duty as opposed to completely staying out of it."</p><p>Jim looked amused. Spock must have sounded rather petulant, but he couldn't help it. He had been running an experiment down in the lab, a time-sensitive one at that, and just when the preliminary results had shown a fascinating result—</p><p>"I've got Lieutenant Zera to attend to your experiment, if that's what you're worried about," Jim pointed out, fingers meeting Spock's in a sloppy Vulcan kiss. The splint around Spock's fingers made a proper ozh'esta difficult. "Now you, Mister, all you have to do right now is sleep like a baby and I'll hold you if you have nightmares."</p><p>"Vulcans do not experience nightmares. Seldom," Spock amended generously.</p><p>Jim frowned. "Well, I certainly do. Seeing your partner getting pierced by a huge ass arrow does that to you. Who still uses arrows and spears these days, anyway?"</p><p>Spock tried to determine whether Jim had launched into a proper sulk or just needed his proverbial feathers soothed. He lifted his hand and began carding through Jim's hair. Jim visibly melted at the gesture; his spine lost some of its rigidity. He proceeded to berate Spock for his "hero complex" where he was involved, that he would certainly be able to dodge or <em>at the very least</em> duck down if something as obvious as a giant, poisonous, menacing arrow flew his way. Spock calmly pointed out that this so-called "hero complex" did come in handy considering Jim's propensity for getting ambushed, kidnapped, and dragged into danger in general.</p><p>Jim looked ready to argue further, but McCoy popped in to glare his menacing glare and threatened to remove Jim from sickbay if he kept "harassing his sick patient". Spock knew McCoy had the tendency to mollycoddle—and wasn't it such a juvenile term, perhaps blame the crew for rubbing it off on him—his patients to the point of suffocating, but only now did he find out he received the same treatment in respect to that. It was ... most welcome.</p><p>Jim pressed one more kiss on his temple and left seven minutes later. McCoy took Spock's readings and instructed him to close his eyes and sleep some more, <em>don't even fight me on this, Spock, it's night already on this tin can so God help me I will sedate your ass if you didn't try to get eight hours of sleep, okay fine, FIVE, and that's the last compromise I'm willing to make.</em></p><p>Spock woke up feeling considerably more alive. His pierced flesh and broken fingers were sufficiently healed. He made one last attempt to persuade McCoy to let him go back to full duty, but McCoy was indeed a force to be reckoned with: he began spewing out ten reasons why the entry wound that had bled him to unconsciousness—and rendered Jim an emotional mess—was "nasty as hell" and forcing a just-recovered body to endure more strains than was appropriate was stupidity beyond compare. Spock nodded solemnly and took off before the good doctor strapped him into biobed once more.</p><p>Light duty was dull. McCoy strictly forbid him from stepping on the bridge, and Spock was sure Jim wouldn't appreciate it either. Lieutenant Zera, his second, had sent him an update of the experiment, along with a most earnest message signed at the end: <em>don't even think of coming here and supervising the experiment, Commander, better rest and get well soon, Sulu's plants kind of miss you they ate their way through the glass chamber</em>. How interesting. His focus wasn't even botany. It seemed his little side project with Sulu had ... grown on him. Ha. See, he could joke the same way humans did. Jim would be proud.</p><p>Blocked from both the bridge and the lab, he sighed in resignation. Paperwork it was.</p><p>Two hours into sifting through his backlog of reports, Spock started to agree with McCoy. Despite being sufficiently healed, the flesh around his abdomen was still tender, his fingers taut as they hadn’t regained the full range of motion, and moving around too much left him sore and miserable. He'd tried to section the pain away, meditate it through, but all attempts didn't help much. His efficiency rate dropped by five percent and he, illogically, wished for Jim's presence right here by his side instead of so far away on the bridge.</p><p>The bridge wasn't even that far away.</p><p>As a way to compensate for the loss, he relocated to Jim's quarters all through the Alpha shift. The first thing he did upon stepping in was to abuse the temperature setting, turning it up to match the Vulcan-That-Was. In normal circumstances, Jim would be livid, citing their argument-slash-truce to compromise for their different thermal comfort, but Spock was having a rough day and he was lonely, so he figured Jim just had to bear with it. Besides, Spock could always use "I am merely taking a sick day, Captain" as a reason. It was a surprisingly effective weapon, one he wielded wisely.</p><p>He woke to a hand petting his hair softly. Blinking, he shuffled upright, feeling mildly disoriented because <em>at what point did he fall asleep?</em> Jim's touch on his arm, however, anchored him and brought him to the present.</p><p>"Jim," he said. Jim smiled at that; the warm, genuine look that always left people dumbstruck in more ways than one. Somewhere down the line someone had started a Captain Kirk Fan Club, which Spock totally didn't know about, at least not officially.</p><p>"How are you holding up?" Jim tugged him closer for one of those temple kisses. "Didn't hear from you a whole day."</p><p>Spock told him that at this point the Enterprise had barely passed its 24-hour cycle. Jim didn't rise to the bait, instead striding to the replicator. He came back carrying a tray.</p><p>"I tinkered with the replicator for a bit, so this should taste better than what you usually replicated," Jim sat down and put the tray on his lap. Spock eyed the plomeek soup with interest, fishing an amused look from Jim. "Yeah, that’s what I thought. Do you want to eat this yourself, or will you be so kind as to let your handsome, worried-sick partner spoon-feed you?"</p><p>Spock decided to indulge Jim, despite all the illogicality of being spoon-fed when the person was fully able to accomplish the task on their own.</p><p>"Anyway," Jim said after the fifth spoon or so—Spock's inability to focus on such a simple count was a solid proof to his compromised health, "why are my quarters swelteringly hot?"</p><p>Spock eyed Jim's command gold lying haphazardly at the bottom of the bed. Jim must have taken it off immediately after entering, leaving him clad only in his black undershirt. Spock took in his partner's flushed skin and beads of sweat starting to form there.</p><p>"I am merely taking a sick day, Captain," Spock said, injecting as much morose as possible into the tone. "My injury was worse than expected, and I found turning up the temperature had eased the discomfort."</p><p>Jim looked dejected, realizing he’d lost the battle before it even began. The helplessness was so adorable that Spock wanted nothing but seize him around the waist and hug him. "Fine, but I'm taking my shirt off, and if you get excited I won't be responsible for it."</p><p>"You may do so. Should I, as you said, get excited, I believe I am fully capable of taking care of it on my own."</p><p>Jim almost dropped the spoon he held in front of his partner’s mouth. "That's cheating, Spock! You can't just say that and <em>not</em> expect me to imagine all kinds of things."</p><p>"Were I in a better condition, I would ask you to enlighten me on this ‘imagining all kinds of things,’" Spock gulped another mouthful of soup. "Unfortunately, I am not, so I shall ask you to save it for another time."</p><p>Jim waggled his eyebrow. "Yeah? And when did it ever stop you before?"</p><p>A fair point indeed.</p>
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